2019 KSC-AIPG Global Fellowship

Created as the result of a Memorandum of Understanding between the Auschwitz Institute for the Prevention of Genocide and Mass Atrocities (AIPG) and the Department of Holocaust and Genocide Studies at Keene State College (KSC), the AIPG-KSC Global Fellowship program offers an all-expenses paid fellowship opportunity to members of the Auschwitz Institute’s international alumni community of atrocity prevention professionals. AIPG-KSC Global Fellows spend a semester on campus at Keene State, immersing themselves in academic life. During their tenure, Global Fellows work closely with Keene’s Holocaust and Genocide Studies Department faculty, including Dr. James Waller, AIPG’s Director of Academic Programs and Dr. Ashley Greene, the Institute’s Academic Programs Officer for Africa. Information on the two previous AIPG-KSC Global Fellows, Dr. Hikmet Karcic and Ms. Patricia Fernanda Perez can be found here.

Ms. Braema Mathiaparanam, longtime human rights advocate, former nominated parliamentarian, President of MARUAH (a human rights NGO), and alumna of the 2018 Global Raphael Lemkin Seminar for Genocide Prevention, served as the 2019 AIPG-KSC Global Fellow. Over the fall semester, Ms. Mathiaparanam brought decades of experiences on issues related to women’s issues, migrant workers, HIV, human rights, and atrocity prevention to Keene, New Hampshire, where she shared her knowledge with students, faculty, and the local community that surrounds the College and its Holocaust and Genocide Studies Department. She explains:

I was exposed to a landscape filled with different types of mass atrocities, crimes against humanity, and genocides, learning about those that have taken place in the past and how they are still happening today. Across all civilisations, we, as human beings, have been territorial, acting as scavengers, appropriating land, wealth, people, and power. I learnt how these acts had a distinct structure, purpose, and communications scheme.

What hit home was what I learnt about the dedicated work that emerged after World War II – the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, Raphael Lemkin’s work on the concept of genocide, etc. – that have resulted in us having tools and a universal approach to address these acts today. I am taking home with me a better understanding of how to share knowledge on mass atrocities in my region, how to apply structural mappings of past mass atrocities; how to be part of the team working on early warning systems, and how to become an advocate in the hope of realizing effective prevention around the world.